Scars Don't Fade
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: As she begins to regret giving Silva up to the Chinese, M shares a story with Eve that she would far rather forget, about her past life as an field agent named Evelyn Cameron, the dark secret of the disastrous last mission that led to the end of her career as an active MI6 agent, and her first time meeting a certain 007...
1. Chapter 1: The Blow

M rested her chin on her hand and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with her right index finger, smearing mascara all down her face in the process. She hadn't slept in around four days, and she was in a zombie-like state, but her eyes were fixed on her laptop screen. It was showing a map of Dandong, China, in a GPS style setup. There was a red flashing light on the edge of the screen, underneath which read; 'SILVA, RAOUL'. The light wasn't moving as it normally would; the flashing dots on the screen showed the exact location of an agent to within a few meters. Silva's light hadn't gone anywhere in forty-eight hours, and for every one of those hours, M had been awake and watching the screen intently. It was difficult to think that a few days ago, she had been congratulating Silva on the success of his mission in China to find and destroy the three USB keys containing the identities of every undercover NATO agent in existence, and was emailing virtual ticket details for a flight from Dandong to Heathrow to the agent, and beginning to work on his debriefing. She didn't know what had happened to him, but she had received no communication from him since his location stopped moving.

M had been in the process of making her way through a Special K bar and trying to keep her eyes open, until nineteen-year-old Eve Moneypenny, one of the service's newest agents, burst into the room, her arms loaded with two Costa take-out mugs and about 200 sheets of printer paper.

M hazarded a quick glance upwards, and saw that the young agent was wearing some kind of bizarre outfit made up of white Prada kitten heels, turquoise chinos and a neon pink Nike running shirt. There was a blue-black Superdry bag slung over her shoulder. She was dropping maybe two or three sheets of paper with every step, and there was sheets of photocopying strewn from one end of the room to the other. M was used to agents running in like this at all hours; most of the time it was for no valid reason, so she didn't bother looking up. Suppressing a yawn, she said; "What is it, Moneypenny? Paper cut?"

"M, this is serious." She said, putting the Costa cups onto M's desk, dropping her insane amount of paperwork in the process. M picked the cups up again and threw a couple of paper napkins underneath them before putting them down again. "Coasters," she said firmly. She was still treating Eve with her usual dry sarcasm; for most agents, serious usually meant that the aged coffee machine in the hall was broken again. M didn't know why, but she seemed to be the only person she knew of in MI6 who could function without a caffeine fix. "That desk's mahogany. And it'd better be bloody well serious, considering the mess you've made of my office."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that its IDs of six agents getting leaked onto Wikipedia can be considered serious."

M had already started sifting through the printed sheets. About fifty of them were just random digits and unidentifiable URLs, but there was around twenty pages with Wikipedia articles bearing the MI6 logo, a photo and a name. There were six of them; Peter Linton, Senga Morran, John McIntyre, Carol-Ann Grant and the penultimate name was Zara Asker. Where did M know these names from? But she knew when she saw the face and name on the last. The picture was an eastern-European looking male with blonde hair. And the name came as the biggest shock yet to M. Raoul Silva...


	2. Chapter 2: The Betrayal

**Just to let you know, the sentances or paragraphs of italics where you hear someone being referred to as Evelyn are M's thoughts. Evelyn is what she still calls herself, although the MI6 computer system just has her registered as 'M', as opposed to the name she was called when she was an agent. (I refer to M's past self as Evelyn Cameron. I just think the name suits the charcter for some reason.)**

M choked on a sob that got caught in her throat as she tried to avoid crying in front of one of her agents. Eve didn't seem to notice this, so M just masked her emotions as she had been doing since she became and agent. She had been in the Secret Service for nearly half her life now. A slightly worrying thought, but M focused on her current predicament. She turned to Eve. "Alright, so maybe I was wrong. Serious situation. Incredibly so, in fact. Look, Eve, get a tannoy sent out to all the agents who've been leaked in the building and tell them to report here immediatley. Senga's in Krgystan; try and get her back to the UK as soon as possible. And find out how the _hell_ the agents' identities have gone viral. Hack the computer that sent them if you must, just get them offline and shut down the account which sent the files onto Wikipedia. I need to get in contact with Silva."  
Eve nodded, but as she turned to leave, she did a double-take and pointed to a scar about four millimeters wide and three inches long just below the short sleeve of M's blouse. "Since when was that there?"  
M indignantly pulled her cardigan back over the little scar. "It was an accident in espionage training when I was thirty," M lied. "Now just get on with what you've been told to do."  
_Evelyn, stop being so stupid. I don't care if the whole scenario with Silva is bringing back bad memories. You need to keep it in. What if she'd seen the others? Stop being so_ _careless!_

M stood up as Eve left the room again, slamming her laptop shut and jamming her headset into her ear as she did so. The headset was set to send messages to any agent on the system when M said their name; the thing was equipped with voice recognition. She quickly barked into it; "Agent Silva? Agent Silva! This is M, do you copy?" But all she heard in response was a low drone that indicated the fact that there was no one on the other end. She waited about ten minutes. Tried again. Still no answer. She used the same process again. Same result. She decided to try it one final time. "Silva? SILVA?! Come on, pick up, man!"

But answer there came none...

Eve poked her head round the door. M pursed her lips, sighed, and said; "You've definetly done everything?" Eve nodded again. "Blimey, that was quick! Well, status report, then."  
"I hacked the computer and wiped the hardrive. The articles are off, but the photos are still all over Google Images, and I can't shift them. The USB files had been dumped on Silva's laptop and the drives on the USB keys got wiped too. I got the computer's digital fingerprint, so we can trace it. I've arranged flights back for Senga and the MI6 files of the leaked agents are off our computer systems. Any luck with you?"  
"None at all," M said. "I'm getting nothing from Silva, his location still hasn't changed. I'm actually starting to fear the worst-"  
At that point, M heard a bleep and noticed the red light flashing on her headset, indicating that someone was trying to get ahold of her. She hastily put it back into her ear, and heard the cool, clear Spanish accent of her missing agent. That was some comfort. But Silva was breathing heavily, his voice was oddly thick and he sounded stressed and weak. "M, this is Agent Silva, do you copy?"  
"I hear you loud and clear, Silva. Where the hell have you been?"  
"Agent in distress, I repeat, agent in distress. I'm roughly three miles outside of Dandong, I'm trapped in a derilict farm. They found my computer and all the USBs. I'm being torture and held here against my will. If you can do anything, anything at all, please do it. Help me..."  
M let a tear fall when she heard the voice of her agent. But she couldn't do anything. "Silva, I can't. They leaked six agents' files onto Wikipedia and Google Images. Y-you- you were one of them. We had to erase you from our system." M was having to force herself to speak. Her voice was barely a whisper and she was firing out her sentances like bullets, short and sharp. "If I could do anything, I swear I would. I-I'm so sorry I have to do this. But we've got to let you go. We can't help. I'm sorry. M out..."

* * *

"God, I feel terrible," M said, as she sat at her esk with Eve's hand resting on top of her own. It was late that night, and M was badly shaken about having to leave Silva to his almost certain death. "I think I know how the last M felt when I..." M's voice tailed off when she realised that she was saying something she shouldn't be.  
"This is about that scar again, isn't it?" Eve said, looking at her boss. "M, I know you were lying when you said abouth the espionage accident. I'm taking a degree in psychology, I know what I'm on about."  
M scowled at Eve. "What happened then is neither relevant or something that you need to know. It's classified information and well in the past. It doesn't concern you in any way shape or form. And I don't like to talk about it. You know too much already. I think you'd better go home now. Just leave me here."

_Evelyn, this is getting ridicuous. DON'T KEEP TELLING HER THINGS ABOUT BACK THEN. Now you need to stop thinking about this. Or the dreams are going to start..._

* * *

That night, Eve lay in bed awake, trying to work out the situation with M. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that M had once been in a similar situation to Silva. But how, Eve couldn't work out.  
She knew that it was absolutley none of her buisness. But she wanted to know...

* * *

M was slumped across her desk, picking at her chipping nail polish. It was about 1 am, and despite not having slept in more than 100 hours, she was still keeping herself awake. Her hands and her entire body now were shaking badly, but she was keeping herself up in a girlish fear of her recurring nightmares. But not just any old nightmares. Everything that M dreampt had actually happened. And when she drifted off to sleep, she didn't want to relive the jolt of one of the bullets hitting her arms or legs.  
Or the crunch as her leg was smashed.  
Or the memory of trying to take her own life.  
Or, the worst one. She didn't want to think about hearing the steady beep of the heart rate montior she was hooked up to growing slower, and slower, until it went flat.  
Her chances of survival after that one mission had been only 20%. But, despite being medically dead for around fifteen seconds, M had pulled through. But she didn't want to think about it.

She didn't want to relive those three days. Not now. Not ever...


	3. Chapter 3: The Dreams

M awoke with a start, her hand flying to the exact same spot on her right arm that it always did when she awoke from the uneasy, terrifying sleep that came with her nighmares. Clinging to life by a thread was something that she had been through, and never wanted to experience again, but it came back to her most nights. She had hated what had happened to her at the time, she hated it now, she hated herself for getting caught and she hated the old M for sending her on the mission in the first place.  
She looked at herself in her blank computer screen; the small Apple MacBook had long since run out of charge, and let out a small shetland pony-like snort of disgust. She couldn't remember the last time she had been in this kind of state but not been covered in her own blood and/or holding a gun at the same time. She had five-day-old makeup smudged all over her face, there were dark circles under her eyes, both from her mascara and lack of sleep, and her short, white fringe was stuck to her forehead with sweat. She had been lying across her desk, and her head hurt from spending the best part of four hours against the hard wood. Her arms were _still _shaking uncontrollably, and most of her body was damp with sweat. All she wanted to do was head back to her apartment, have a shower and spend the next three days in bed. But that wasn't an option. Driving wasn't the best idea due to the fact the was currently like the walking dead, and she didn't want to risk crashing her old Mercedes. The car had been hers for around 30 years, and although it had been quite expensive at the time of buying it, if she was to have some kind of accident, which, let's face it, she probably would, it would cost more than the car was worth to get it fixed. She didn't want to be seen by _anyone _whilst she was in her current state, so the Underground and walking were both completely out of the question. So for the time being, she was going to have to sit and wait for Eve to arrive again, and then put up with the embarrasment of having to ask the young agent to give her a lift home.  
She glanced at the clock mounted on her wall. Half past six in the morning. M slipped her blazer off of her shoulders and folded her arms on her desk. She stared up to the ceiling, and then down to her bare arms.

Eve had been right in suspecting that the little, seemingly insignificant scar on M's shoulder was no accident.


	4. Chapter 4: The Revelation

M heard someone knock, and groaned; "Somebody'd better be dying!"

Eve walked in, but when she saw M, she dropped everything she was carrying (her MI6 ID badge that she needed to get into the building, a black ring binder labeled 'WIKIPEDIA LEAK', a purple GoreTex waterproof, a Cath Kidston bag that seemed to contain what would've been her lunch had it not ended up all over M's floor, and her car keys.)

"Eve!" M said indignantly, and a little louder than she had intended. "It's six o'clock in the ruddy morning, what do you want?" Eve was standing stock-still, rooted to the spot. "Eve, I've been up most of the nigh trying to sort out the whole situation with the Wikipedia leak, and trying to come to terms with the fact that I've pretty much killed Silva. Would you say something, and stop standing there gawping like a dead fish, or just get out of my sight. Please."

Eve was looking a damn sight more organised than she had the previous morning, but she was still standing and staring, her mouth agape. M tried to see what Eve was looking at; she followed the young agent's gaze, and then she noticed her bare arms. She had been there with nothing covering the part of her body she went to actual physical pain to stop people from seeing unless they really had to, and she had done bugger all to conceal what she had been hiding for years now.  
_Oh damn! Evelyn, I TOLD you to stop being so careless! You're really in it this time. The shit's hit the fan; now you've got to deal with the consequences. You're going to have to tell her now..._

Eve seemed to have partiallly regained the power of speech. "What the...how...since when-"

M knew exactly what Eve was looking at, and most of the four people who knew about it had had the same reaction, Gareth Mallory and the Prime Minister included (don't ask.) It took one hell of a lot of concealer to hide it completely, but M got by. Just barely, but she did.

Because both of M's arms were completely covered in scars that looked as if they were the reminants of bullet wounds, most just like the one just below her shoulder which Eve had spotted the previous day. There were a few on her right leg as well, but they were right at the top of her thigh, so no one ever saw them. There was a really huge one on the inside of her left elbow, and M herself had possibly had something to do with that one; maybe because she had accidentally made the original wound far worse than it had to be.

"Eve, really! I know that it might be a bit shocking, but you've got a tongue, so could you please make use of it, or just remove yourself from my line of vision. On second thoughts, stay put. I need to tell you about this, or else I'm never going to hear the end of it. Sit down." M gestured to the chair in front of her desk, but her last words fired out too quickly, so sounded like; "Siddown!" Eve breathed out heavily, and did as she was told. "M, what the _hell _is going on?"  
"You'll find out in about a minute. Now, I am unnoficialy swearing you to secrecy. If I tell you what I intend to tell you, do you promise not to tell another living human being?"  
Eve considered, and M could tell that she was about to say yes, but the nineteen-year-old wavered. "Not even Bond?"  
"Bond already knows," M confessed quietly. "Neither of us knew who the other was at the time; it was my last mission in the field, you see, and his first. The incedent was about five or so years before I became M. Still, without him, irritating as he may be, I would be long dead by now. Eve, we're going off the subject. This is serious buisness; do you promise not to tell this to another soul?"  
"Yes, ma'am."  
"And do you promise not to ask quesstions, or keep bringing this up?"  
"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay, I think I can trust you." With that, M dug a few sheets of paper out of a desk drawer. Eve looked confused.  
"What's that?"  
A small smile played about M's lips. "Well, I'm not allowed to show anyone but agents with Level 1 security clearance or a 00 status official mission reports. Plus, I kind of got bored on my last week off. I would try and tell you it myself, but the memory gives me the most awful nightmares. Well, they don't really count as dreams because everything that happenens in the dream actually happend to me at some stage, but you know what I mean."  
M handed Eve the wodge of paper, and the young agent was instantly sucked into the story written on them...


	5. Chapter 5: The Torture

_"The force of another lead bullet fired from less than a foot away from her penetrating her already bloodied arm made Evelyn's entire body jolt backwards and threw head back, making it hit off of the back of the chair she was tied to." _The paper Eve was holding read. _"Evelyn clenched her jaw as another wave of numbness, then excruciating pain burned up her arm. She had long since stopped counting the number of times she had been shot, but she guessed that it was up somewhere in the regions of twenty four times in her arms alone by this point. She had been on a mission to track down and destroy the inner circle of Deja Vu, a Parisian drugs gang, but had been caught planting explosives in the underused warehouse that served as the gang's control centre. That has been three days ago. She had been being held captive and tortured for three days, by three people, two men and a woman. Isn't fate artistic? They say bad things happen in threes. Evelyn almost laughed at the irony of her situation. But the pain was almost completely unimaginable. As well as her arms, Evelyn had been shot around sixteen or eighteen times in her right leg,she couldn't move the bottom half of her leg and there was absolutely no recognisable feeling whatsoever from her knee downwards. The thought that_ _a bullet may have torn muscle or destroyed a nerve crossed her mind, but she ignored it. To make matters worse, her other leg was completely shattered. When she had been caught, Luc, the largest and potentially the most terrifying of her three captors had thrown her to the ground and stamped on it to prevent her from going anywhere. It had certainly worked. Evelyn's leg was twisted and broken, and absolute agony. Whatever else had happened to her, Evelyn was in a very bad way indeed. _

_Camille, the woman and supposedly the ringleader of the three, finished screwing a silencer onto her revolving pistol and aimed it towards Evelyn's head. If she was going to shoot Evelyn anywhere other than her head, which right now wasn't looking too bad, then it was going to hurt like fury. "You have one last chance to talk. I want to know who you are and who you're working for. I wouldn't mind bank details either. I can tell that you're not enjoying this. You tell us what we want to hear; we let you go. You lie one more time; you die. Start talking, or I'm going to decorate the wall with your brains!" The unpleaseant Parisian gang leader hissed in French. The run-down Adidas warehouse in which Evelyn was being held and tortured rang with Camille's words. Evelyn's voice was a harsh, gravelly whisper and it hurt to talk, but she made herself. She responded, also in (rather poor) French; "I have nothing to declare. My name is Evelyn Bonahm-Carter, I'm forty-eight years old. I live in London. I work for no-one." This was only half a lie. Evelyn had missed out everything about MI6, and her surname was actually Cameron (Bonahm-Carter was her married name, and she was divorced) but the rest was mostly true. As she spoke, Evelyn jerked her hand a little, and managed to press the button on the side of her watch that detonated the plastic explosive she had planted a few days previously. The blast set off about six different alarms at once, and then there was the sound of the actual explosion as well. Camille made a slit-throat gesture at Evelyn and mouthed "I'll get you later" as she, Luc and the third, a little-spoken Spanish guy named Javier went running, fearing that they were being attacked_

_The warehouse took an entire hour to walk around completely, but Evelyn still had to work quickly if she was to have even the faintest hope of being rescued. Using her teeth, she got ahold of the penknife strapped to her upper arm, pulled it up and out of her shirt and dropped it into her hands. She caught it and cut the cable ties binding her wrists. It was a huge part of MI6 training, being taught how to evade capture, and, if the worst happened, how to tolerate the pain that came with torture, but in training, they had used high-voltage electric shocks and poisonous jellyfish (the memory of that made Evelyn feel sick.) Being shot about 36 times from point-blank range was a bit...Evelyn wanted to say unorthadox, but she knew that wasn't right. Still, no amount of training had prepared her for this. With a few fragile, jerky movements, she got her hands round to her fromt. Her limbs were stiff from lack of use, and the tiniest movement stung like hell.  
Pressing down hard on the face of her watch, she spoke as loudly as she could into it. "M, this is Agent Evelyn Cameron. Do you copy?"  
"I hear you. What's the problem?" Her boss' voice gave her a little security.  
"M, can we try and keep this short? I detonated the explosive to buy some time, but talking bloody hurts. abort the mission. I'm in a derilict warehouse outside of Renne, I'm severely injured and I can't walk."  
"Okay, sou you're telling me that the mission has gone completly_ _balls-up, that five years of MI6 work is now completely down the pan and you're being tortured?"_  
_"Sounds about right."  
"I knew it. I've had an agent positioned around five kilometers away from you for a few days now. I'll get him operational. Are you in need of immediet medical treatment?"  
Evelyn rolled her eyes. M could be a bit of a plonker sometimes. "What does it sound like?"  
"Oi, keep your tampon in. Okay, see you in about three hours."_


	6. Chapter 6: The Aspirin

_Evelyn sat and waited. She couldn't do much else, and, in a desperate attempt at trying to help herself a little, she started trying to wrench a bullet out of her left arm, one that was just below her elbow _[hence the really big scar on the inside of M's left elbow.]_ Bracing herself, she plunged two fingers into the wound and pulled out a bullet, but seemingly just made it worse. By the looks of things, with the bullets bunging up the holes, there hadn't been too much blood, but that had just changed in the case of that one wound. It bled far more than it had to begin with, and Evelyn started to panic. What if either the bullet or her fingernail had hit an artery? She looked at her feet. She was tired, and losing the will to live. This was it, she thought. She knew what she was going to do..._

_She wiped her bloody hand off her trousers, and plunged a finger into her mouth. Wrenched out the filling in her back tooth. Picked the worst of the metal off of it. And unearthed her emergency cyanide capsule_

_As she stuck it into her mouth, the taste was awful, but familiar at the same time. She remembered her espionage instructor's voice when it became standard procedure for all field agents to have something like that concealed in one of their teeth for dire emergencies. "Put it in your mouth. The plastic around the actual poison should melt away. If it doesn't, bite into it. The poison has a high acid content, so if it doesn't work, you're going to end up with third-degree chemical burns in your mouth. If you feel that; swallow it. If not; spit it out. There's something up." Well, Evelyn was going to do just that. Whatever she was trying to commit suicide with was dissolving in her mouth harmlessly and doing absolutley nothing.  
Suspicious, she spat the contents of her mouth into her hand and sniffed it. It was then that she remembered the fact that she had been knocked unconcious when she was caught for a conciderable amount of time. Plus, when she had come to, there had been a numbness that she couldn't explain in the back of her mouth. She appeared to have had some 'dental work' done whilst she was unconcious.  
For what was in her hand was a mixture of tiny chips of metal, saliva..._

_And the dissolved remains of an aspirin tablet._


	7. Chapter 7: The Rescue

**_I just realised that listening to Dark Paradise by Lana Del Ray really helps you get the feel for this story!_**

_Evelyn slumped forwards. How the _hell _was the whole aspirin thing even bloody POSSIBLE? The pain she was in was something that she would never wish upon anyone else, not even Camille, though all this was her fault in the first place. She stared at herself. Blood was gushing from the one now open wound in her left arm in particular, but she was completely covered in the stuff. She was completely giving up. Until she heard someone shouting in French. A feminine voice, cold as ice. _

_Oh, shit. Ohshitohshitohshit. _

_She saw Camille, with the silenced pistol in her hand, turn to Luc. "Fifty euros that I can shoot her in the head from here!"  
Oh christ. Evelyn may have completely lost the will to live, but she didn't want to die because a gangster was betting someone that she could shoot her in the head from ten feet away. She might have wanted to die, but Evelyn was going to have some kind of say when it came to the end of her life thankyouverymuch. The click as Camille pulled back the firing mechanism echoed through the warehouse. "This is it," Evelyn thought. "I'm really going to die this time. What's taking you so long? For god's sake, would you just get this over with?" But Evelyn heard a screech of tyres, and a scream as Camille went under the wheels of the pale blue Aston Martin that had just driven through the wall. The car reversed a little, and the man driving it climbed out. He was in his late twenties with cropped auburn hair and he was wearing a suit. He forced the gun out of Camille's dying hand. He quickly shot her in the head, then wasted no time in doing the exact same to Javier and Luc. "Game. Over." He said as he dropped the gun and ran to Evelyn's side. When he spoke, Evelyn noticed his Scottish dialect.  
"You Evelyn?" He asked, crouching by her side. Just breathing was painful now, so she just nodded, thinking that talking was probably not the best idea. The agent spoke again. "Right, I'm getting you out of here. What I want you to do is lean forward as far as you can, and put your left arm around my shoulders, okay?" Evelyn did as she was asked, and the young agent carried her towards the Aston Martin..._

* * *

_Evelyn was lying across all three back seats of the Aston Martin, her head pressed against the glass of the window. The white polo shirt she was wearing was completely stained red by now, she was all to concious of the fact that she was lying in a pool of her own blood and when she saw her reflection in the rear-veiw mirror, she was pretty sure that there was more white than blonde in her shoulder-length hair. But by this point, she was too weak to care about something as trivial and stupid as her personal appearance. Her vision was blurry, she couldn't think straight Her breathing was forced and she was pretty sure she was dying, but she held that thought. If there was such a feeling as that of your body shutting itself down, then she was feeling that now. _

_Her rescuer was in the front, both driving and having an incredibly loud phone conversation with M over the speakerphone built into the car. Evelyn could hear every word both men said.  
"007, I'm doing everything I can. Now utter another syllable on the subject and I'll have to kill you. And beleive me, that's no exaggeration."  
"M, I really don't care! Her condition is a lot worse than previously feared, she's losing loads of blood and if we don't get her to hospital within around five minutes then she's going to DIE!"  
M's voice quietened and he sounded a lot more serious. "007, is she in the veichle with you?"  
Evelyn was assuming that 'she' was herself, and 007 was her rescuer. 007 curtly replied to M's question. "Yes."  
"And can she hear you?"  
"Yes."  
"Then I suggest you shut up or-"  
Evelyn forced herself to speak. "M, 007 or whatever your name is, I've been shot about 36 times within the space of three days. I've tried to kill myself once toady and the only reason I'm not dead already is beacuse someone replaced my cyanide capsule with an aspirin. How the hell that happened, I dont know, but on the subject of living or dying; 007, do I look like I bloody well care?"  
At this, M seemed to have a change of heart. "Evelyn, wheather you care or not, I'm getting you through this if it's the last thing I do. 007, drive as fast as you can to your nearest hospital, which is about eight kilometers away. If you get a tickeet, rip it up. I'll call and arrange an air ambulance to get you two back to the UK within the hour. M out."  
_

_Eveln half-smiled. "My blood group's B if that's any help whatsoever." She breathed out heavily and closed her eyes. "Thank you. W-what's your name?"  
The man in the front seat turned to her. "The name's Bond," he said. Evelyn was passing out from loss of blood by this point, but her later recollection of the name was; "James Bond..."_


	8. Chapter 8: The Monitor

_Evelyn couldn't move. She couldn't see or speak or even breathe properly; she was getting oxygen via a plastic tube rammed down her throat. She seemed to have lost a few of her senses; she couldn't see or feel anything. She had a vague idea of how her limbs were positioned, that was it. One of her legs was ramrod straight and covered in something hard, the other flopped beside it. One hand was folded over her chest, the other was hanging over the side of her bed, and someone, probably M, was holding onto it. Her hair was clinging to the back of her neck with sweat and she wanted to get it off; it was annoying her, but her arms seemed to be completely dead; there was no recognisable feeling whatsoever in any part of her body._

_She heard someone, again, probably M, muttering; "Evelyn, please wake up..." The grip on her hand tightened. It hurt, but she couldn't say anything, so couldn't complain. She thought about that. She WAS awake, she just couldn't move. Wake up from what?_

_Evelyn's thoughts were a mess. A breif look at what was going on inside her head would be something like this; where am I? What's going on? Why can't I move? M, would you let go of my hand before you break my fingers? Am I supposed to be able to feel my pulse in my _eyelids? _What's that noise?_

_The noise was in fact a heart rate monitor. And it soon occurred to Evelyn that she was hooked up to it. And it was a lot slower than it should be. Eveyln focused on that. She had never been religious in any way shape or form, but at that moment she prayed that her heart wasn't going to give out. Life sucked sometimes, but she had had a change of heart since the cyanide/aspirin episode a few.. Hours? Days? Months? She didn't know how long it had been since she had tried to kill herself with a headache pill that she had mistaken for a highly acidic fast-acting poison capsule, but she didn't want to die. Not now._

_The mildly irritating yet terrifying noise echoed inside her head. The sounds were getting slower, growing further and further apart with every second. This was weird. Evelyn had a resting heart rate of 85, but the beeps were slowing. She was terrified that they were going to stop at any moment. Beep...Beep...Beep...Beep...  
_

_And the tone went flat. What the hell? Evelyn could still feel her being, her messed-up thoughts were still drifting around in her head, she had actually regained control of her own breath. She could jerk her fingers ever so slightly. But she couldn't feel her pulse anywhere in her whole body. She felt better than she had in god knows how long, but the impossible was running through her head. It couldn't be. But it was.  
_

_Her heart had stopped._

_She was dead. Apparently._


	9. Chapter 9: The News

_Evelyn could feel various wires being pulled out of her. The first thing to go had been the heart rate monitor. It was confusing. How could she be medically dead...but feel so alive at the same time? She was getting the annoying sensation of being able to feel her heart beat in the back of her eyelids. Wait, heartbeat? So maybe she wasn't dead after all..._

_M had let go of her hand, and Evelyn heard him pacing and muttering about how the bloody NHS had let her die. He had lost one of his best agents, blah, blah, blah. _

_Evelyn grimaced. Her throat was raw and she was still having to force herself to make any kind of audible sound, but again, she did. "One more bloody word about me being dead and as soon as I can use my arms, I'm going to strangle you."  
M's face lit up. Evelyn opened her eyes. Her vision was still fuzzy, but she could make out the faint shapes of both M and her rescuer, James Bond. M was ecstatic. "Evelyn! You're alive!"  
"Well, either that or we're all dead and in a horribly lifelike situation, so I think I'll go with your answer. Wha- how long have I been out?"  
She turned to James for an answer. She had taken an automatic liking to the young Scotsman, although she was a tiny bit jealous of the fact that he was already a double 0, yet Evelyn was almost old enough to be his mother, and she had been in the field almost since he was in nappies. However, it was M who spoke. "Just short of a fortnight now," he said, taking her hand in his grasp again. "You were in a complete mess when 007 here eventually got you to hospital. And it was not a pretty sight, I'll guarantee you. You needed two major operations, six blood transfusions, over 200 stitches and there was one really huge wound in your arm that needed a skin graft. They took more than thirty-seven lead pellets out of you all in all. You've been in a medically induced coma for nine days now. You've actually been dead for about the last quarter of a minute."  
"How is that even possible?"  
"Search me," M shrugged. Evelyn shifted herself up a bit, so she was almost sitting.  
"Injury-wise, what happened to me? I can't feel most of my right leg, but everything else hurts like fury."  
"Okay, you were shot in both arms and your right leg over thirty six times. Your left leg is broken in about six different places; there's a bunch of titanium pins in there holding everything together. And your other leg...that's where I'm afraid I've got bad news. A few rounds totally destroyed a ligament in the back of your knee. And remember when you broke your kneecap on a training exercise? Well, one of the metal pins put in then jolted backwards, so whenever you bent your leg you ended up with a bit of metal tearing a hole in the muscle structure of your leg. You needed surgery to remove that, but they had to take out quite a bit of damaged tendon in the process. That kind of thing does heal, but it takes time and lots of it. Until the muscle heals up, which generally takes the best part of four months, then the bottom of your leg is effectively paralyzed. There's no nerve connection; that was all destroyed when you were shot, so you shouldn't feel a thing, but I'll be incredibly surprised if you can walk at all for any time during the next six months."_

_The news fell of Evelyn like a two-ton weight. She heard M's words. And her world completely fell apart..._


	10. Chapter 10: The Gunshots

Eve laid the paper on the desk. She had no idea what to say, or indeed how she may say it. She looked up at M. Her boss had put her jacket back on, and was tapping her fingers off the desk. Eve saw that M had plugged her laptop back in, and had started typing something into an email.  
"Agent Raoul Silva (birth name Javier Bardem) is missing, presumed dead after a mission in Dandong, China.../" M had accidentally leaned on the full stop key, and then the forward slash, but had clearly lost the heart to continue. Eve noticed the tears in M's icy blue eyes.  
"I know I cut off at a bit of a cliffhanger, but I couldn't bring myself to remember any more of it in that much detail. Still, it near destroyed me that day, when my predecessor told me what had happened to me..." M's voice tailed off, and she put her head on her desk, her entire body shuddering with silent sobs. When she looked up again, there were tears streaking her face. "And the thought that my M had tried to save me, and managed it at that. But it's impossible now for me to do that for Silva. He could be god knows where and have had god knows what done to him, and I can't do anything at all. I feel awful..."

Eve put her hand on M's shoulder. "You did what you could. And if he's got half a brain then he'll know what the best thing to do is. And not meaning to be nosy or anything, but you said that the mission put an end to your fieldwork career. I have my suspicions, but what really made you quit?"  
"Well, I suppose I should tell you. But what happens in this room stays in this room, do I make myself totally clear?"  
"Crystal, ma'am."  
"Well, the assumptions that people make are generally wrong. Most people think, well, that is if you count Gareth Mallory as a _person, _that the ligament damage I suffered was too severe to continue doing what I did best, but that's utter rubbish. What really happened was...well, I don't know. I couldn't walk at all for almost six months, and I was on crutches for four after that, but when I could eventually do all the fitness tests and debriefings and all that malarkey, I turned out pretty well. Save for one thing. I was in a surprisingly good physical state considering what I'd been through. I was okay psychologically as well. But maybe it was simply a phobia brought on by my experience. Maybe I was afraid that I would do to someone what the three French gangsters did to me. But whatever the reason, I had to give up work as an active agent. Why? I couldn't shoot..."


	11. Chapter 11: The End

"Eve, I think I've wasted enough of your time," M sighed. "Look, haven't you got something you need to be doing?"  
"Well, I was meant to be at a debriefing/psychology test about ten minutes ago now."  
"Then you're going to be in serious shit. Get a move on!"  
Eve turned and left, and M slumped at her desk, accidentally elbowing over the open bottle of water lying next to her. Thinking about what she had just told Eve made her want to remember. Not the really bad, mentally - and physically, in some cases - scarring stuff. But her final debriefing...

_Evelyn dragged herself out of the pool, still completely soaking wet and totally was a strong swimmer; not particularly fast, but she could go for ages. She trudged soggily over to her mobile phone, which was in her kit bag and ringing impatiently. "M?" She said, picking it up and holding it to her ear.  
_"_Evelyn, where are you?"  
"Swimming," she said. "But what're you calling for, our meeting's not for another fifteen minutes."  
"How long have you been at it?"  
"Three quarters of an hour; I was planning to keep going for another ten minutes."  
"Right. How much have you done?"  
"Just under four kilometers now."  
"You're still on recovery, remember, don't overdo it. Look, the thing with the PM took less time than anticipated, can I get you as soon as possible?"  
"Test results?"  
"Affirmative."  
"I'll be right there." With that, Evelyn snapped her phone shut, threw a towel around her shoulders and made her way towards the changing rooms._

* * *

_"Right, you know why you're here,'' M said, as Evelyn took a seat, still wringing out her wet hair. "Now, I'm going to ask you. What do you think you got on your physical exam?"  
"Forty percent?" Evelyn guessed, shrugging and investigating a random bruise on the back of her hand.  
"Seventy-four," M said. "Psychology, now. What do you think came up?"  
"All the general from someone who's been tortured. Mental scarring, chance of bad nightmares, possible alcoholism or substance addiction, that sort of thing."  
"No less psychologically stable than you were when you left. All in all, Evelyn, I am very impressed with how you've turned out. With the exception of just one thing. Now, I very seldom call agents in here unless there is cause for concern or I think there is a need for them to step down, and you are no different. Why do you think that might be?"  
"Search me," Evelyn murmured, looking up, completely drained of color. Okay, why the hell was she being told to step down after she had been *this* close to dying?  
"Your self defense has gone completely down the pan. Your martial arts skills are severely lacking and your ability to fire a gun is totally nonexistent. I was intending to promote you to a 00, until these results came through. I am afraid that you have to leave MI6 unless you are willing to keep on as a mission controller or secretary. But, there is a silver lining. Look at this." M handed her an envelope. Evelyn could barely read it, due to the tears welling up in her eyes. She would far sooner die than leave MI6, but the three letters at the top of the paper changed everything._

* * *

They say that every cloud has it's silver lining. And that particular dark cloud that had swallowed M up after that last mission had gained her not one but two things. Her current position, as when the last M had retired, he had left the role in her well-capable hands. And the final three letters of her real name. MBE.

M stared hard at one of the scars above the inside of her wrist. Scars don't fade. as she knew by now, both physical and mental. But you have to let go. To quote Lana Del Ray, M knew how she felt about Silva;  
_There's no remedy for memory,  
His face is like a melody,  
It won't leave my head,  
His soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine,  
But I wish I was dead..._

But she had to let go. She couldn't let her past haunt her forever. She sighed again, and started tapping into her computer the end of Silva's final dossier.

* * *

_Raoul Silva was one of the best agents I have come across in my whole career. In a word; reliable. I would have trusted the man with my life. And nothing pains me more than to write these few words. Raoul Silva is missing and presumed dead after a mission in Dandong, China. H leaves no known family, but was an enormous credit to this service. Today, MI6 lost a great agent..._

* * *

_But life goes on, _M thought...


	12. Dedications

**For those of you who don't know, this was my first James Bond fic. Call this cheesy if you want, but I got the idea in a dream and wanted to see where it went. But I wouldn't have kept going without support, so I dedicate this story to the following: **

**RebaForever15: the first person to really like my work. Her support for everything I do makes me so happy, and her fics are my biggest inspiration. Thank you :)**

**Lilylunapotter142, Standtallatskyfall13 & McKeller-Win: Giving me their much-valued thoughts and opinions on this(and Standtallatskyfall13 stopped me before I wrote the whole thing calling Eve Eva. Mega whoops!)**

**and Dame Judi Dench: My favourite actress and human being. M is her role for life, and her leaving James Bond marked the end of an era for me and all her fans. A brilliant actress has left the best movie franchise RIP M. You will be in our hearts forever. **


End file.
